Eliza Mimski
Three Women Waiting

There is dread on Lunia Czechowska’s mask-like face,
eyes heavy-lidded. Her
elongated Modigliani neck
has resigned itself.
Each day repeating, repeating.
a grinding screech, a
knife scratching against a china plate.

The absinthe drinker, chin in hand,
mouth lined with tedium and her eyes reduced to slits,
bones decaying and fingers slow-growing into claws,
ponders nothing and cannot stand another day
in this empty Picasso cafe.

Whistler’s mother, her eyes forward,
white day cap, thin lappets,
dark garb, hands in her lap with
a handkerchief clutched in her hands,
her feet supported by a block of wood is
patiently waiting for the pandemic to end.

—Submitted on 05/14/2020

Eliza Mimski‘s poetry has appeared in Poets Reading the News, Entropy, New Verse News, The Eunoia Review, Anti-Heroine Chic, and other journals, as well as in the anthology the Skinny, Five:2:One, Voice of Eve, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Visual Verse, Writers Resist, and has been in the anthology Hers: A Poets Speak Anthology (Beatlick Press, 2017), edited by Jules Nyquist. She lives in San Francisco.

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Ronda Piszk Broatch
Dream Sonnet With Persistence of Memory

I was awake and
you were my sleeping compass

I was about to tell you this morning how
I became allergic to Saturday’s shit show, but

you were savaging
your pillow, and the cat was chewing my toes,

you were wearing the same shirt
you wore flushing the transmission,

your pants, slung over a chair like that painting
I like of Dali’s clocks, the cat naps on when

she needs the scent of oil and pants. Sundays
we rap to The Lorax and Fox in Socks, the cat digging

her way onto my lap, and
me, I’m just trying to find true north.

—Submitted on 05/14/2020

Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Lake of Fallen Constellations (MoonPath Press, 2015). Her poems have appeared in Blackbird, Prairie Schooner, Sycamore Review, Mid-American Review, Puerto del Sol, and other journals.

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Zoë Fay-Stindt
How We Write the World to Life Again

I love watching the bowed heads, how,
prayer-like, though faith floats thin
these days, we curl in to do the work:
bring our pens down until they breathe
something we thought stilled. Is this it?
Is this how we resuscitate each other?
A poem is no check, no hour of sleep, no, is not
the restored heart of our lost uncle or gone
sister. But let it be something, goddamn it.
Let us open our eyes when we come to,
and let us come to, again, refilled
with something life-like, even. We see you,
wrangled paradigm. We see you, ruined binary:
flourish or death. What families have you ruined
today? What good health? What new beginning
have you brought into bed with you, then burned?
Oh, I know, big drama. It’s all flash with us,
all rah-rah until we go home,
and most of us always go home.
We always take to our nails, eventually,
so sure they’ve grown inches since we got here,
assembling, showing our good cause off
with our teeth. Give me your huddled,
give me your muddy shoes at the door.
Give me every good callus, every departed skin:
there, start again. This time the consciousness birthed you,
and you have been screaming inside her for years,
tearing, waiting to break in. Don’t wait for the settled time.
Go on, I see your fingers twitching—this is the page.
Here, the pen. You’ve got all this goodness
to hold, and so many to hold it with you,
though you can’t see them from here.
They told us there was only one way
forward, with both tired hands
gripping that fragile, oracular body.

—Submitted on 05/14/2020

Zoë Fay-Stindt is a bicontinental poet with roots in both the French and American south. Her poems have appeared in fields, The Indianapolis Review, Winter Tangerine, Rust and Moth, The Floating Zo, and others journals.

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Robin Gow
survival poem

when i can’t get up
i pretend i am just
a swarm of beetles sprawled
across a bed sheet. i scurry
the walls towards the bathroom
to wash my face. no one can tell me
there is no chance of hail today.
i don’t believe in violins
& i’m skeptical lately of mothers too.
what am i going to do with all this
peanut butter? this is a serious question.
i have a whole shopping bag full of it.
i’m scared of running out. i met
an octopus last night in my dream
& it blinked its eyes like a human.
i was in a tide pool & star fish
kissed my feet harshly too.
the sea urchins turned to sushi
& floated to the surface. i will eat
ice cream for dinner tonight
& the spoon will fall heavy
from a hole in the ceiling.
my brother is coming soon
to help lift all my dragon bones
& carry them away. i miss
my sandals i broke last year.
will i miss the parking lot
behind my apartment? the better question is
will it realize i am gone?
how long will it take
for the pigeons to gossip?
the block i live on is mostly populated
by singers. every night they crawl out
with their microphones
& their sadness. i am a poet
& thus, i keep my sadness
to myself. i need to save it
so i can write it into poems.
when i have a good fresh sadness
i’ll save it in the freezer
& unthaw it when i need
a strong emotion. i have felt
grey lately which is to say
i eat nothing but dry cereal
with my bare hands. the blue clouds
have gone rotten with age.
you need to stir the pot
or the macaroni sticks to the bottom.
whole buildings disappear you know?
they just go away. there’s a vacancy
on my street right now. people come
& stare into the ruin dreaming
of their own impending disappearances.
they take pictures & hope to see ghosts.
i know it’s no use. all the ghosts are
playing mancala in my living room.
i am alone so i let them in.
i told them to keep it down
& i will keep them as long as they want.
they eat jam from the jar.
bananas do not in fact grow on trees
like they told you. you are rewarded bananas
for good behavior. this is why i am kind
& i always have bananas
in the green bowl on the shelf.

—Submitted on 05/13/2020

Robin Gow is the author of Our Lady of Perpetual Degeneracy (Tolsun Books, 2020) and Honeysuckle (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Their poetry has appeared in Poetry, New Delta Review, Washington Square, The Tiny, About Place Journal, and other journals, as well as in anthologies including The Impossible Beast: Queer Erotic Poems (Damaged Goods Press, 2020), edited by Caseyrenée Lopez and Willie Weaver. They hold an MFA from Adelphi University and live in eastern Pennsylvania.

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Quintin Collins
Would-Be Rats

Brookline, dawn: squirrels note the hour
on Pleasant Street. Squirrels
up and down tree trunks,
in and out of trash cans
near Comm Ave. Squirrels,
a viral tweet says, would be rats
if they came out only at night.
Bushy tail gangs loiter:
a half-eaten apple
in a squirrel’s jaws,
two squirrels zig and zag,
another squirrel stops and plots.
the next move. I stop and stare.
A BDP squad throws spotlight
into the morning. What dark
do they hope to chase
from this street? Squirrels know
the hour; though the dark
eases from the trees, daybreak
hasn’t crested the apartments.
The cops follow me
with the light. If I roamed
this neighborhood—multi-million-dollar
homes line these streets—
at night, what would they call me?
They turn their attention
to the road. A squirrel bounds
to a trash can for scraps.
The squirrel emerges,
a banana peel in its teeth.
In my teeth, I clutch what names
daylight affords me.

—Submitted on 05/11/2020

Quintin Collins is the author of The Dandelion Speaks of Survival, forthcoming from Cherry Castle Publishing in 2021. His poems have appeared in Up the Staircase Quarterly, Glass Poetry Press, Poems2go, Transition Magazine, Ghost City Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthology A Garden of Black Joy: Global Poetry from the Edges of Liberation and Living (Wise Ink Creative Publishing, 2020), edited by Keno Evol. Collins is assistant director of the Solstice Low-Residency MFA program at Pine Manor College in Newton, Mass. Twitter @qcollinswriter.

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Zoë Fay-Stindt
Quarantine Inventory of Things You Cannot Do

If exercising, do not go farther than 1 km from your domicile,
do not forget to bring your papers with you. Do not walk

the roman road, do not pet the terrier you pass, do not plunge
into that polluted river. You may pick the rose hips to boil

for tea, strengthen against the deadly thing. You may
empty the house of its liquors, though we strongly advise

against it. You may not touch your mother, may not
bring her small body into your arms when she trembles.

You may not go to your father’s for the last time, may not
plan the funeral, and anyway there won’t be time

or room or money or space to mourn, together, for months.
Do not panic. Do not panic. Do not panic. Do not succumb

to existential dread, or mourn the life you had, so plain and bare
before you, easy walk, easy beer, easy touch of a stranger’s forearm.

Forget forearms. Forget the longing between your legs.
Forget that soft animal of your body, now limp

or overgrown with fur or resentful, and really, if we’re honest,
all three. Cancel the flight. Prod that thing inside you

that scares you so horribly, that sucking privilege. Note how long
it took you in the text to burrow your way into it, note the places

you turn away or step out to use the bathroom or take a break
yes a break, because you are so tired, poor thing in the warm house

with your paid bills. Do not turn to puddle of desperation.
Do not let the despair sink into you like a needle pulling and pulling

life-force out. Do remember your priorities: long-quenched
thirst for solitude, holy commitment to your good

neighbors, these unchosen partners, their anxiousness floating
through your open door like a cloud. Make a list. Pile up the things

you are grateful for, then bless the pile. This is your warrior time,
soft one. Toughen those scales, and go headlong into the current.

—Submitted on 05/14/2020

Zoë Fay-Stindt is a bicontinental poet with roots in both the French and American south. Her poems have appeared in fields, The Indianapolis Review, Winter Tangerine, Rust and Moth, The Floating Zo, and others journals.

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Robin Gow
aubade possibly made of ash

the birds outside my window
are not birds at all. they are likely
a swarm of girls with bob-haircuts
all chattering early morning.
it is important to get a head start
on gossip & to always gossip
about the big deal topics. the birds are
discussing the impending super nova
of our sun. one bird is telling the other
she should hold off on buying
a very expensive purse
in case the sun burns us all.
i want to chime in & tell her
to buy whatever she wants if we’re all
going to be ash soon. i think about
an ash version of myself held together
only by stillness. the next wind
will disperse all my pieces.
i have always been fascinated with
places people want their ashes scattered.
we still have my grandfather’s ashes
& my dad won’t let me take them down
to the creek to pour them out
of the metal jar they wait in.
as you can imagine,
there are a lot of ghosts
who come to my windows at night.
i tell them to please go.
they mistake me for a television.
i explain i have no storyline
& they don’t understand what i mean.
soon i will walk outside
& confirm that the birds were not birds
but what if they are birds?
we all know animals can speak human
they just choose not to reveal themselves.
all the time i type out comments
on people’s Facebook statuses
just to delete them. i’m imagining
a giant urn full of all my deleted words.
nothing special, just a lot of
“have you”s and “i love”s.
what if i am a bird
& i don’t know it yet? what if i have
a bob haircut. i hope not
i prefer my hair less uniform.
my dog dreams about
squirrel tails without the rest
of the squirrel. we are all selecting
our favorite traits from ever living creature.
somedays all i can see is wings
& toes. today though i hope i can
at least see elbows & ankles.
no one appreciates the feet of birds enough.
so thin & so sturdy. if i noticed
another creature reduced to
only ash, i would inhale deeply
& blow the ash out across the room.
my new apartment will be made
of straw & apologies. my new lover
will be a nest of birds. my new sun will be
sour & green & unswallowable.

—Submitted on 05/13/2020

Robin Gow is the author of Our Lady of Perpetual Degeneracy (Tolsun Books, 2020) and Honeysuckle (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Their poetry has appeared in Poetry, New Delta Review, Washington Square, The Tiny, About Place Journal, and other journals, as well as in anthologies including The Impossible Beast: Queer Erotic Poems (Damaged Goods Press, 2020), edited by Caseyrenée Lopez and Willie Weaver. They hold an MFA from Adelphi University and live in eastern Pennsylvania.

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Quintin Collins
the bees rebuild

today we build a new home,
the old hive foam-smothered
—bodies dropped, writhed—
but today, new honeycombs
to nest our young, collect honey
—some twitched
for days. we move on, restart
—dandelions bloom. everything
burned last time. everything
fluorescent in sunlight. we
rebuild today. we gather pollen
—before that, it was a hose.
we sting. yes, we sting. we sting
only once, only carefully.
we know we will die
if we sting.
they swat. we sting.
today we build a new home—
if we can save what we love,
what is death?
we sting.
some days, on peony petals,
we nap because we are tired.
we tire of how they swat. we sting
to protect—
maybe if we didn’t sting.
maybe if we didn’t fight—
we sting,
but only to protect the hive.
last time, everything burned,
but not before they scraped honey
from our home.some bodies
burned—today we restart. today we
rebuild our home.at sundown, what poison
will douse these honeycombs?
what fire—
what else can we do but sting?

—Submitted on 05/11/2020

Quintin Collins is the author of The Dandelion Speaks of Survival, forthcoming from Cherry Castle Publishing in 2021. His poems have appeared in Up the Staircase Quarterly, Glass Poetry Press, Poems2go, Transition Magazine, Ghost City Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthology A Garden of Black Joy: Global Poetry from the Edges of Liberation and Living (Wise Ink Creative Publishing, 2020), edited by Keno Evol. Collins is assistant director of the Solstice Low-Residency MFA program at Pine Manor College in Newton, Mass. Twitter @qcollinswriter.

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Zoë Fay-Stindt
Stop Being So Jealous of the Creatures

Rinse & repeat: get high on the mountain and slip
your way down its rocky vertebrae, counting lichens.
Slick with rain, down dog, let your long sob out.
Ooo! That one hurts, that one came from down deep.
Rinse the mold from the sausage, its slick tube
wicked in your hands, lonely soldier, and you relish it.
Enough. You’ve become a swallow now, nest-anchored.
And anyway, how could you think about bodies
with the worry of your mother’s probable death,
or your father’s new haircut like a breakup
over Zoom. That long braid you spent your life
using as a compass home. Outside your door,
check for snails with each step, casual murderer,
and come to daily prayer at the watering hole,
the pink tamarisk a wind-tousled feast
for all those devout attendees you don’t yet
have names for: the bees & scarabs, little green flies,
those spotted beetles and red bellies, all drunk
and tumbling into you when they come up for air.
And you are jealous of their gathering, of their bodies
clunking into each other, knocking elbows, each warm belly
pressing, briefly, into a neighbor’s willing back—no, hold on,
you’re anthropomorphizing again, this fantasy too easy
in quarantine, and if you are the bug how could you possibly
be that bird up there, cutting into the sky all day
before ducking back into her cave, two new lives
to feed, and the mud grateful to hold them, and the shingles
as orange as they’ve ever been, and there no sickness
between them but warmth, their bodies crowding in.

—Submitted on 05/14/2020

Zoë Fay-Stindt is a bicontinental poet with roots in both the French and American south. Her poems have appeared in fields, The Indianapolis Review, Winter Tangerine, Rust and Moth, The Floating Zo, and others journals.

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Quintin Collins
The Freedom Trail Tour Guide Shyly Mentions Slaves Were Sold at Boston Harbor

What brick would guide usacross the Atlantic?
Ocean floor sand—this grainwas once bone, oncebody.

Crispus Attucks would receive his ownbranch on the trail
from State and Congressto Framingham
to the Harborto waters chartedfrom the Ivory Coast
to the Americas.

Whose tax dollars would payfor the masonry,
lawmakers ask. Lawmakers allege
some history isn’t worth itto save. Ask Faneuil Hall,
the busker who beats buckets, pots, and pans—
first, put a few bills in his hat—
he’ll explain where to find lineage: Check between the stone—
not the redwhiteand blue

bricks from the Commonto Bunker Hill. Time flays these streets
to their cobbles. No familyhistory will sprout
if you place a seed in the pothole. You won’theal the wound.

Some tourists comment how nice it is that they can see remains
of times paston the U.S.S. Constitution.They hop
on and hop off a trolley,stop at a bar
celebrate the libertiesof their bodies in waves
of Sam Adams until the last dregstrail down their throats.

—Submitted on 05/11/2020

Quintin Collins is the author of The Dandelion Speaks of Survival, forthcoming from Cherry Castle Publishing in 2021. His poems have appeared in Up the Staircase Quarterly, Glass Poetry Press, Poems2go, Transition Magazine, Ghost City Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthology A Garden of Black Joy: Global Poetry from the Edges of Liberation and Living (Wise Ink Creative Publishing, 2020), edited by Keno Evol. Collins is assistant director of the Solstice Low-Residency MFA program at Pine Manor College in Newton, Mass. Twitter @qcollinswriter.

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